In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Connecting Canadians and Others
  • David R. Spencer (bio)
Andrew Clement, Michael Gurstein, Graham Longford, Marita Moll, and Leslie Regan Shade, eds., Connecting Canadians: Investigations in Community Informatics (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2012)
Kirsten Kozolanka, Patricia Mazepa, and David Skinner, eds., Alternative Media in Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2012)
Kieran O’Doherty and Edna Einsiedel, eds., Public Engagement and Emerging Technologies Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013)
Manuel Castells, Networks Of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012)

When I first received the challenge of reviewing the grand sum of four books, all based in the new world of cyber communities, I shuddered for a moment, imagining the size of the task that confronted me. I was not mistaken. What we have here is a determined effort by a colony of new media types in a new world to carve out a space in the current literature for some new and definitely fresh ideas. The concept of media community is hardly new, having flourished in the world of journalism scholarship since the mid-19th century. The concept is based in a very simple premise, that media, and in particular the media that deliver the daily news, play a critical role in the methods we use to define society. This, of course, can have both positive and negative consequences. On one side, you can have media institutions that act as the defenders of democracy and liberty. On the other, you can see the rise of tyrannies supported by governments that are just as willing to tear down societies. On a positive note, we can point to a range of actions, from the interventions of the cartoonist Thomas Nast who brought down a corrupt political leader and his gang to the truly brave to a determined broadcaster Edward R. [End Page 327] Murrow who stuck out his proverbial neck to draw a line between good and evil in mid-20th century United States.

Historical knowledge is a fine thing, but how does it relate to what we are about to examine in some detail? There are a number of cautions that one should be aware of when attempting to assess any given event in history, including recent ones. One of the great dangers that any reviewer or analyst will bring to the table focuses on what I will refer to as the “miracle cure syndrome.” You know, the naïve belief that a particular apparatus, such as a home computer, will create all kinds of miracles for you from shopping from your own home to creating access to more information than one could possibly need. This attitude in particular is prevalent in media circles. The highway to the digital world is littered with the bodies of now long forgotten technologies, most justifiably so.

Let me draw upon your patience for a moment as revolutions in communications practice and technology are critical for what we are about to explore here. Trust me, I will only work with the earth-shattering moments in the lives of observers and participants. The invention of lithography was one of those mind-bending experiences shared by people in the early 19th century that changed the way that people responded to each other for the simple fact that the use of illustrations in a magazine such as Britain’s Punch precluded the need to wonder what someone or something looked like. Photography, of course, followed. Radio comedian Fred Allen was known to complain about the invention of television because no one in his field could now hide in a bad show. Real historical honours belong to the first electronic transmission system called the telegraph. The byword was often bigger and better, as shown in the creation of the virtually block-long Corliss Engine mounted for the American centennial celebrations in Philadelphia in 1876. These new media shattered boundaries and created communities where they never previously existed. Of course, it was only recently that the telegraph was superseded in the world of digital communications.

There is no particular order or ranking to the books I will be discussing. The books are examined in the order they arrived. As a result...

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